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I remember thinking, as Covid ravaged the country in December 2020, that at least the holidays the next year would be better. There would be more vaccines, more treatments, more immunity. Instead, we got Omicron and a confusing new phase of the pandemic. What do you do with a variant that is both monstrously more infectious and somewhat milder? What do you say about another year when we didn\u2019t have enough tests, enough ventilation or the best guidance on masks? And how do you handle the fracturing politics of a changing pandemic in an exhausted country?\n\nZeynep Tufekci is a sociologist and New York Times Opinion columnist who does a better job than almost anyone at assessing the pandemic at a systems level. To solve a public-health crisis, it\u2019s not enough to get the science right. There are also challenges with supply chains, infrastructure, research production, mass communication, political trust and institutional inertia. I\u2019ve found Tufekci\u2019s ability to balance the epidemiological data and the sociological realities uniquely helpful across the pandemic, and you can hear why in this conversation.\n\nWe discuss how the Covid crisis has changed, as well as Tufekci\u2019s sobering conclusion: that the virus, at this point, is feeding on our dysfunction. We look at what Omicron is and isn\u2019t, where the Biden administration has succeeded and failed, the debate over closing schools, why so many Asian countries have so powerfully outperformed the West, how the role of vaccines has changed, what a pandemic-prepared society would actually look like, and what should be true of our pandemic policy in a year that isn\u2019t now.\n\nBook recommendations:\n\nThe Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy by Irvin D. Yalom and Molyn Leszcz\n\nChaos by James Gleick\n\nThe Dead Hand by David Hoffman\n\nThoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.\n\nYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of \u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\u201d at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.\n\n\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\u201d is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rog\xe9 Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris, Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.